Women Hold Only About A Quarter of Top Media Executive Positions

As much as we hear about female media moguls Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown, and Janet Robinson, they are the exception more than the rule.

Women occupy only slightly more than a quarter of the leading managerial jobs “such as chief executive officer” at news companies worldwide, according to a survey taken of over 522 newspaper, radio, and television companies by the International Women’s Media Foundation, Bloomberg reports.

Overall, women represent 35 percent of the full-and part-time journalism workforce worldwide, and the survey shows typical evidence of a glass ceiling in that the lower the position in media companies, the less gender disparity. Women hold 39 percent of senior management positions such as managing editor and bureau chief, and represent 41 percent of news-gathering, editing, and writing jobs.

If you’re a woman seeking to make it in the cut-and-thrust media world, it turns out that the U.S. is a less friendly place to be than Eastern European countries such as Russia, Bulgaria, and Nordic nations. But before you start to get too down on the U.S., the study also suggests that we are better off here than in, say, Argentina, India, Japan and Kenya.

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